I'm kinda starting to wonder about interiors

[MosquitoSmasher]

Hi all, 

 

I love when in a open world game I can enter buildings, there's just something cool about it. It really adds to the feeling of a living, breathing game world. V really let me down in this regard. I hope so much VI does this a lot better but so far we've only had rumors about how lots of interiors can be accessed. 

 

We now have two trailers and lots of shots, we mostly see general stores which V had as well, V had gas station stores too of which some we could enter. We also know we can access burger joints, but if we can enter all of them remains to be seen. But that goes for many other interiors as well. Of course I don't have unrealistic expectations that we can enter any house and building, but it's unfortunate we've yet to see something resembling a shopping mall ala Vice City, ala Dead Rising. 

 

Or have I not been looking correctly during the new trailer? I'm not worried or anything but man do I hope they have improved on this big time. Same as hand to hand combat. Please let it actually be fun now. 

Edited May 7 by MosquitoSmasher

[have.a.vice.day]

Where can I find the burger joint thing? I don't think that was revealed, though maybe my memory is off.

[Florida_Man]

I think you are going to see a ton of open interiors in GTA VI.

[tomas torres]

I have a feeling that there will be dealerships apart from buying them by cell phone, there I imagine there will be more exotic cars that would not be easily seen like Panthete distributed in all areas, for example in the port area of the Leonida Keys you can rent or buy boats or launches, then I can think that there will be some electronics store for airpods or cell phones, then I would love to see the Hard Rock Casino, as well as different stores (the shopping center that has different stores of different types) as stores outside the center.

[TaylorSwiftDies2038]

On 5/9/2025 at 4:57 PM, have.a.vice.day said:

Where can I find the burger joint thing? I don't think that was revealed, though maybe my memory is off.

 

The le*ks most likely. However, there are a few restaurants/bars that have clear interiors in trailer 2, so that's not far off either.

 

On topic, I really hope we get a map with lots of interiors. Saints Row 2, a video game from 2008, had plenty of interiors. That game let you enter liquor stores, night clubs, shopping malls, museums, an airport, a community rec center/high school with an underground casino, multiple casinos, an underground cavern, laundromats, run-down buildings, and so on...

 

And you're telling me that Grand Theft Auto V can't even let you go inside a dang fast food restaurant? I understand that Grand Theft Auto V had to make sacrifices and was built on the same base hardware as the original Saints Row from 2006, but interiors is definitely something that GTA VI should improve on.

 

This is a video game with a budget that rivals that of the One World Trade Center. My expectations are as high as that building itself lmao. Having a large number of interiors comparable to Saints Row 2 after more than a decade of development is reasonable IMO especially given how many interiors Red Dead Redemption II had.

[Ogivaldelta]

One of the worst game design quirks of GTA is when they actually do let you access a buildings interior, but literally only for a singular mission and then it remains locked down forever after.

Its something I would hate to see return in VI.

[MosquitoSmasher]

On 5/10/2025 at 1:57 AM, have.a.vice.day said:

Where can I find the burger joint thing? I don't think that was revealed, though maybe my memory is off.

It was in the material we weren't supposed to see, so to speak. But it was good to see that, I don't recall many of those in V, if at all? Was there a Starbucks like interior in V or was that SA? 

8 hours ago, tomas torres said:

I have a feeling that there will be dealerships apart from buying them by cell phone, there I imagine there will be more exotic cars that would not be easily seen like Panthete distributed in all areas, for example in the port area of the Leonida Keys you can rent or buy boats or launches, then I can think that there will be some electronics store for airpods or cell phones, then I would love to see the Hard Rock Casino, as well as different stores (the shopping center that has different stores of different types) as stores outside the center.

Good one about dealerships. That reminds me of IV with those interiors and cool sportscars and sh*t. 

 

Yep, it seems we can finally (sheesh) listen to music while on foot, so either we get those earpods right off the bat or we gotta buy them. There is no good reason not to have a very nice amount of interiors. They want to make a game world that is super lifelike and believable, you can't be closing off all these buildings. 

 

I recall a doc, was it here or Reddit? And basically it said which type of building would be enterable and which wouldn't. Hopefully it's a lot more because I don't recall seeing shopping mall there and it really should have that. Imagine some cool missions in a mall, hell yeah. 

On 5/10/2025 at 3:40 AM, Florida_Man said:

I think you are going to see a ton of open interiors in GTA VI.

Bro, I hope it so much. Not just the standard stuff we always had before V but tons more. It adds so much to the experience in my opinion. 

8 hours ago, TaylorSwiftDies2038 said:

 

The le*ks most likely. However, there are a few restaurants/bars that have clear interiors in trailer 2, so that's not far off either.

 

On topic, I really hope we get a map with lots of interiors. Saints Row 2, a video game from 2008, had plenty of interiors. That game let you enter liquor stores, night clubs, shopping malls, museums, an airport, a community rec center/high school with an underground casino, multiple casinos, an underground cavern, laundromats, run-down buildings, and so on...

 

And you're telling me that Grand Theft Auto V can't even let you go inside a dang fast food restaurant? I understand that Grand Theft Auto V had to make sacrifices and was built on the same base hardware as the original Saints Row from 2006, but interiors is definitely something that GTA VI should improve on.

 

This is a video game with a budget that rivals that of the One World Trade Center. My expectations are as high as that building itself lmao. Having a large number of interiors comparable to Saints Row 2 after more than a decade of development is reasonable IMO especially given how many interiors Red Dead Redemption II had.

Very good point about Saints Row, how could I forget? It had way more interiors than IV had, and sure IV killed it with the amazing attention to detail, but come on. 

 

Ideally every restaurant and bar in that game world is enterable, but I know that won't be the case. Which is OK, if there still ARE plenty other interiors. The strip clubs should be fully enterable and explorable, something V did right. Airport? Make it like IV, please, such type of stuff is great. 

 

In IV there was this big apartment building we could enter, the shootouts were great there, really enjoyed those. More of that please. 

 

Watch_Dogs 2 for example had its own version of Silicon Valley with the Google'ish building, fully explorable. Stuff like that. I probably shouldn't put too much stock into trailers yet and the absence of a shopping mall and such, maybe they keep that as a surprise, I hope so. 

8 hours ago, Ogivaldelta said:

One of the worst game design quirks of GTA is when they actually do let you access a buildings interior, but literally only for a singular mission and then it remains locked down forever after.

Its something I would hate to see return in VI.

Yeah, that kind of sh*t is the worst. Didn't we enter a hospital in V in some mission? Or another big building for a Lester mission and afterwards it was closed forever. So stupid, such a shame. 

[Henry Kobold]

On 07/05/2025 at 14:19, MosquitoSmasher said:

Olá a todos, 

 

Adoro quando, em um jogo de mundo aberto, posso entrar em prédios; isso é simplesmente incrível. Isso realmente contribui para a sensação de um mundo de jogo vivo e pulsante. V realmente me decepcionou nesse aspecto. Espero que muito mais VI faça isso melhor, mas até agora só tivemos rumores sobre como muitos interiores podem ser acessados. 

 

Agora temos dois trailers e muitas cenas, vemos principalmente lojas de departamento, que V também tinha, e V também tinha postos de gasolina, dos quais podíamos entrar em alguns. Também sabemos que podemos acessar hamburguerias, mas ainda não sabemos se conseguiremos entrar em todas elas. Mas isso também se aplica a muitos outros interiores. Claro que não tenho expectativas irreais de que possamos entrar em qualquer casa ou prédio, mas é uma pena que ainda não tenhamos visto algo parecido com um shopping center à la Vice City, à la Dead Rising. 

 

Ou será que não estava olhando direito durante o novo trailer? Não estou preocupado nem nada, mas, cara, espero que tenham melhorado bastante. Igual ao combate corpo a corpo. Por favor, que seja divertido de verdade agora. 

You reminded me of the frustration I felt when GTA 5 came out. I bought it on the day it came out. It was frustrating to see that, for example, the city mall had no interiors, that the airport had no interiors, that the observatory had no interiors. Not to mention that I was very hopeful that there would be more cities, that there would be that San Andreas vibe back. Anyway, I played GTA 5 very little after that. I finished the story mode about 3 times and played some online mode DLCs every now and then. In the last few years, I've been playing a lot of RDR2. In fact, it's R*'s best work, in my opinion, to date. I feel like GTA 6 is going to be something great in every way: story mode, online mode, biome diversity, interior diversity, cities with their own particular "climates". I'm really looking forward to this game and I firmly believe that when it comes to interiors, this game will be a masterclass, I feel like that San Andreas vibe is coming back in this game.

[TaylorSwiftDies2038]

14 hours ago, MosquitoSmasher said:

Very good point about Saints Row, how could I forget? It had way more interiors than IV had, and sure IV killed it with the amazing attention to detail, but come on. 

 

Ideally every restaurant and bar in that game world is enterable, but I know that won't be the case. Which is OK, if there still ARE plenty other interiors. The strip clubs should be fully enterable and explorable, something V did right. Airport? Make it like IV, please, such type of stuff is great. 

 

In IV there was this big apartment building we could enter, the shootouts were great there, really enjoyed those. More of that please. 

 

Watch_Dogs 2 for example had its own version of Silicon Valley with the Google'ish building, fully explorable. Stuff like that. I probably shouldn't put too much stock into trailers yet and the absence of a shopping mall and such, maybe they keep that as a surprise, I hope so. 

 

 

Ah yeah, I remember Watch Dogs 2 had a lot of miscellaneous interiors that weren't particularly useful except to add immersion. Fast food restaurants, cafes, clothing shops, car dealerships, some abandoned buildings, certain office buildings, Alcatraz, etc. What I really like about Watch Dogs 2 was that they wouldn't just lock the player out - you could go back well after the mission was completed. Like their version of Epsilon (New Dawn) had a whole ass church that you could re-enter as you pleased.

 

I think it's realistic to expect restaurants, shopping malls, hotels, some office buildings, casinos, night clubs, gas stations, civic buildings (such as hospitals, police stations, and city halls), gang hideouts, supermarkets/convenience stores, banks, and so on to be accessible. Not every building obviously. Just stuff that normal people use all the time and is frequented by the public so that the map feels more "complete", so it feels like there's stuff to do in the city.

 

And I just want to f*ck around in a shopping mall or a Wigwam (McDonald's) lol.

[olzhas1one]

On 5/7/2025 at 8:19 PM, MosquitoSmasher said:

Or have I not been looking correctly during the new trailer?

There's no "wrong" way to be looking at these trailers right now. We haven't seen a single second of official gameplay (outdated leaks notwithstanding) and I don't trust or care for these trailers all that much since they're all staged scenes anyway. We'll know everything when/if they release a gameplay demo.

 

And if they don't, then that's cause for serious concern.

[Evil.Tim]

On 5/11/2025 at 5:21 AM, Ogivaldelta said:

One of the worst game design quirks of GTA is when they actually do let you access a buildings interior, but literally only for a singular mission and then it remains locked down forever after.

Its something I would hate to see return in VI.

Yeah I hated this. It made sense for some interiors (like IAA offices) but there were plenty of other interiors where it made no sense to permanently lock the player out after the mission.

 

When I installed the "unlock interiors" mod, I was taken aback at just how many interiors there actually were - over 50, a lot of which were interiors used for just one mission and then abandoned.

[Watain]

I agree, this was one of the many disappointments surrounding GTA V for me. VC, SA and IV all had a pretty vast number of accessible buildings and V had almost none. One of V's biggest gripes for me personally was how they locked the Tequi-La-La club outside of missions. That could've been a really cool spot for hanging out, both in story mode as in Online. Alas, they made it a mission exclusive location for whatever reasons.

 

I also hope GTA VI will improve in this regard. Hasn't there been rumors about this very detail, though? Hopefully VI will indeed open up a lotta buildings and provide more interiors to explore.

Edited May 12 by Watain

[The Made Man]

More interiors is a must especially with current hardware. Don't let us down R*. 

Edited May 14 by The Made Man

[JimmysDoubleChin]

I just hope the interiors aren't impossible spaces anymore. Large interiors with small exteriors. Also, I hope they do away with copy and pasting interiors so that every place feels unique.

[helloworld]

Let's assume that Rockstar would even want every or at least a massive percentage of interiors to be accessible. How would this affect the overall performance and file size of the game?

[rebeldevil]

There will certainly be more open interiors than GTAV. Will EVERY SINGLE BUILDING be enterable? Absolutely not. That would be a HEINOUS amount of work.

[awwr999999]

San Andreas has the right amount of interiors because you can get a good feel for all of them.

GTA5 has less interiors than San Andreas because Rockstar prioritized GTAO over GTA.

They've stated that interiors don't work with multiplayer for a bunch of reasons.

 

[TaylorSwiftDies2038]

Something else that was really cool about Watch Dogs 2 was that it had a certain number of gang hideouts that had really detailed interiors that you could enter.

 

I think these interiors were designed because it made sense - Watch Dogs 2 had a bunch of collectibles that you had to collect across the map, so it made sense to hide them in these interiors, and it encouraged the player to explore the entire map and every intricacy that it had. Funny enough, Red Dead Redemption II had a very similar system.

 

In particular, the Tezcas (a Hispanic gang) had a large apartment complex that they operated out of in Oakland that the player could enter (although it was restricted) at any time. There was also a bunch of other front businesses/warehouses that each gang owned that you could enter at any time, although they would immediately shoot at you.

[NewCrossGate]

I think the 70% of buildings have interiors rumour can be put to bed now, it seems like some of the buildings are still using 2d images for interiors. 

[IVCavalcade]

Having every building enterable is just a waste of development time and puts unnecessary strain on the hardware. What reason is there to enter some random office building or strangers home? The novelty would be cool but from a gameplay perspective it's a waste of resources. These are consoles that have limitations at the end of the day, and devs have to decide where to allocate the systems resources. I would much rather have a curated series of interiors that are functional and interesting to explore. I'm 90% there will be a mall and a bunch of other cool interiors. Probably many more interiors than we've seen before. But this fantasy people have about all interiors being enterable is just unfeasible. Even disregarding hardware, from a development time perspective the only way this could be done is if they procedurally generated the interiors. I would much rather have 100 hand crafted interiors than 1000 procedurally generated ones. 

[el carlitos]

Thanks to the fast SSD a lot of interiors should be very possible. The level of interiors at Cyberpunk 2077 would be fine. More would be very welcome. Interiors can give a very different vibe to the game. I hope the interior of bigger buildings will be enterable witout loading sequence. I want to open a door and just enter the building.

 

[Red Dead Rebel]

It isn't a matter of hardware. It just doesn't make sense to implement realistic NPC behavior unique to those interiors some people want. Would be a huge waste of resources.

 

Things like night clubs, bars, restaurants, and gas stations/convenience stores, sure, I think we'll have a lot of those.

[SharksFlyUp]

I don't think there's any doubt that there will be a lot more bespoke interiors in this game relative to V, which was scaled back in many ways because it stretched the 2005-era hardware it was developed for to its absolute limits.

 

Interestingly, there were some indications in the leaks and Trailer 1 that the range of enterable interiors might be a lot broader. Shots of houses and apartment buildings had lighting phenomena that seemed to suggest real geometry and GI were in use rather than any form of parallax. When combined with Rockstar's patent from several years ago describing a method to procedurally generate building interiors, and technical demonstrations in other projects of advanced LOD techniques that might make this viable on ninth gen hardware, this led to a lot of speculation that many ordinary homes and apartments would be enterable. There doesn't seem to be as much evidence of this in Trailer 2, where even close up interiors often seem to be parallax or flat textures. Maybe enterable generative interiors were never a feature. Maybe they still are. Maybe they were, and Rockstar scaled them back for performance reasons some time in the last 18 months. 

Edited May 13 by SharksFlyUp

[MosquitoSmasher]

On 5/11/2025 at 5:48 PM, Henry Kobold said:

You reminded me of the frustration I felt when GTA 5 came out. I bought it on the day it came out. It was frustrating to see that, for example, the city mall had no interiors, that the airport had no interiors, that the observatory had no interiors. Not to mention that I was very hopeful that there would be more cities, that there would be that San Andreas vibe back. Anyway, I played GTA 5 very little after that. I finished the story mode about 3 times and played some online mode DLCs every now and then. In the last few years, I've been playing a lot of RDR2. In fact, it's R*'s best work, in my opinion, to date. I feel like GTA 6 is going to be something great in every way: story mode, online mode, biome diversity, interior diversity, cities with their own particular "climates". I'm really looking forward to this game and I firmly believe that when it comes to interiors, this game will be a masterclass, I feel like that San Andreas vibe is coming back in this game.

 

Bro, I agree. I remember how I had not read many reviews, nor asked any people about the game because I was there day one. So I played the prologue and then full of excitement started walking around trying to find a Burger Shot or Clucking Bell to buy a burger, only to find out it was closed. I do believe some of them had fully built interior and yet we couldn't enter. There were hot dog stands at the beach, nobody selling them. Bruh! 

 

I replayed 3, VC, SA and 4 again last year and I was shocked at the details of 4. I saw workers outside a restaurant cleaning the parking lot early morning or at night, I saw garbage trucks driving around and picking sh*t up and honestly just so many stuff like that. V definitely was a downgrade in several things, not to mention the damage system. RDR2 had interiors but also several times where I hoped I could enter it and I couldn't. I really hope you're right. 

On 5/12/2025 at 4:37 AM, TaylorSwiftDies2038 said:

 

Ah yeah, I remember Watch Dogs 2 had a lot of miscellaneous interiors that weren't particularly useful except to add immersion. Fast food restaurants, cafes, clothing shops, car dealerships, some abandoned buildings, certain office buildings, Alcatraz, etc. What I really like about Watch Dogs 2 was that they wouldn't just lock the player out - you could go back well after the mission was completed. Like their version of Epsilon (New Dawn) had a whole ass church that you could re-enter as you pleased.

 

I think it's realistic to expect restaurants, shopping malls, hotels, some office buildings, casinos, night clubs, gas stations, civic buildings (such as hospitals, police stations, and city halls), gang hideouts, supermarkets/convenience stores, banks, and so on to be accessible. Not every building obviously. Just stuff that normal people use all the time and is frequented by the public so that the map feels more "complete", so it feels like there's stuff to do in the city.

 

And I just want to f*ck around in a shopping mall or a Wigwam (McDonald's) lol.

That sounds great to me. It really should have that. Yep, f*cking around in a shopping mall would be awesome. Hell, in Vice City and even IV I'd go into a hospital, murder any soul there and then have the cops keep coming at me while I'm in there and trying to last as long as I could, lol. Or blocking off the entrance to a store, but still able to enter it myself and then have the cops come at me, but they can't enter, while I keep killing them, tanks, choppers outside, haha. 

4 hours ago, IVCavalcade said:

Having every building enterable is just a waste of development time and puts unnecessary strain on the hardware. What reason is there to enter some random office building or strangers home? The novelty would be cool but from a gameplay perspective it's a waste of resources. These are consoles that have limitations at the end of the day, and devs have to decide where to allocate the systems resources. I would much rather have a curated series of interiors that are functional and interesting to explore. I'm 90% there will be a mall and a bunch of other cool interiors. Probably many more interiors than we've seen before. But this fantasy people have about all interiors being enterable is just unfeasible. Even disregarding hardware, from a development time perspective the only way this could be done is if they procedurally generated the interiors. I would much rather have 100 hand crafted interiors than 1000 procedurally generated ones. 

But nobody is saying they expect every building to be enterable, of course it would be my dream if truly anything can be entered but that's not realistic. 

 

However, when a game like Saints Row can do it, Watch_Dogs 1 and 2 can as well, and several more with nowhere near the budget Rockstar has. I think we can all agree that interiors were severely lacking in V, and I can agree with what you're saying. 100 hand crafted interiors over 1000 pg ones, yep, absolutely. 

On 5/12/2025 at 8:52 AM, olzhas1one said:

There's no "wrong" way to be looking at these trailers right now. We haven't seen a single second of official gameplay (outdated leaks notwithstanding) and I don't trust or care for these trailers all that much since they're all staged scenes anyway. We'll know everything when/if they release a gameplay demo.

 

And if they don't, then that's cause for serious concern.

I understand your skepticism, but their track record speaks for itself. We will definitely see gameplay and hopefully get a more clear idea of interiors. Once they come with the very first gameplay introduction video let's hope they show some interiors, or at least confirm that they have listened to the criticism about it. 

8 hours ago, awwr999999 said:

San Andreas has the right amount of interiors because you can get a good feel for all of them.

GTA5 has less interiors than San Andreas because Rockstar prioritized GTAO over GTA.

They've stated that interiors don't work with multiplayer for a bunch of reasons.

 

That is concerning, because GTAO will be a very big thing for VI as well. I don't expect any real additional content for story mode once VI and the new GTAO are out, so hopefully they knock it out of the park with the base game in regards to that. God I hope you're wrong, because I do not care one iota for GTAO, give me new sh*t for SP. 

 

The report by Jason Schreier was that after VI is out that new and big content would get added. But I doubt that means for story mode. 

5 hours ago, NewCrossGate said:

I think the 70% of buildings have interiors rumour can be put to bed now, it seems like some of the buildings are still using 2d images for interiors. 

Yeah this was always too good to be true. 

4 hours ago, el carlitos said:

Thanks to the fast SSD a lot of interiors should be very possible. The level of interiors at Cyberpunk 2077 would be fine. More would be very welcome. Interiors can give a very different vibe to the game. I hope the interior of bigger buildings will be enterable witout loading sequence. I want to open a door and just enter the building.

 

Ideally without loading yeah, but if need be I can accept some short loading for a huge mall or something. 

2 hours ago, SharksFlyUp said:

I don't think there's any doubt that there will be a lot more bespoke interiors in this game relative to V, which was scaled back in many ways because it stretched the 2005-era hardware it was developed for to its absolute limits.

 

Interestingly, there were some indications in the leaks and Trailer 1 that the range of enterable interiors might be a lot broader. Shots of houses and apartment buildings had lighting phenomena that seemed to suggest real geometry and GI were in use rather than any form of parallax. When combined with Rockstar's patent from several years ago describing a method to procedurally generate building interiors, and technical demonstrations in other projects of advanced LOD techniques that might make this viable on ninth gen hardware, this led to a lot of speculation that many ordinary homes and apartments would be enterable. There doesn't seem to be as much evidence of this in Trailer 2, where even close up interiors often seem to be parallax or flat textures. Maybe enterable generative interiors were never a feature. Maybe they still are. Maybe they were, and Rockstar scaled them back for performance reasons some time in the last 18 months. 

The first part sounds super promising, the second bit less so. Were these the same locations that we also saw in the first trailer where they did look to be enterable? 

 

At the end of the day we can only hope Rockstar sees it this way too. You make this insanely detailed game world, you can't be providing only a handful or so of interiors. sh*t will get old real quick. 

Edited May 13 by MosquitoSmasher

[TheKiwiBoy]

4 hours ago, Red Dead Rebel said:

It isn't a matter of hardware. It just doesn't make sense to implement realistic NPC behavior unique to those interiors some people want. Would be a huge waste of resources.

 

Things like night clubs, bars, restaurants, and gas stations/convenience stores, sure, I think we'll have a lot of those.

 

Agree with this. If R* does make alot of interiors for buildings, it's definitly cool becouse there will be alot to explore. But on the otherhand - like Red Dead Rebel said - it will be a waste of resources. The big stuff like a bar, stripclub or a small/big store will be implemented. Such as a few houses. 100% sure about that. I just hope that the game will run smooth with al the details the game has.

 

RDR2 was just a diffrent thing, i dont think you can compare it with that game. There are less (WAY less) buildings then GTA will have. So thats also less interiors to make and less to 'pollute' the game with heavy stuff. Besides that, GTA VI's map will be huge compare to RDR2.

[IVCavalcade]

2 hours ago, MosquitoSmasher said:

I think we can all agree that interiors were severely lacking in V

For sure, I fully agree that V lacked in this area and the city suffered greatly from it. LS doesn’t feel like a living breathing city because you can’t interact with many of its buildings. It’s about striking the right balance between the city feeling interactive and real, and just having a pointlessly excessive amount of useless buildings. Even having 20% - 1 in 5 - interiors enterable would be amazing tbh, let alone 70%. 

[TaylorSwiftDies2038]

13 hours ago, IVCavalcade said:

For sure, I fully agree that V lacked in this area and the city suffered greatly from it. LS doesn’t feel like a living breathing city because you can’t interact with many of its buildings. It’s about striking the right balance between the city feeling interactive and real, and just having a pointlessly excessive amount of useless buildings. Even having 20% - 1 in 5 - interiors enterable would be amazing tbh, let alone 70%. 

 

Yeah.

 

I think that's something Grand Theft Auto VI needs. Not just interiors, but interiors that make logical sense. I'm not crazy enough to think that literally every building is going to be accessible; that would be absolutely time-consuming, and arguably not worth it. Why would you need to enter every cookie-cutter house?

 

The focus should be on interiors that add life to the city. Interiors that people use every day. Fast food places, restaurants, universities/schools, hospitals, police stations, government/administrative buildings, shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores, clothing stores, shopping malls, hotels, casinos, entertainment venues, bars, night clubs, so on and so forth. Buildings where we will see people go in and out, have experiences, and that we can enter and actually do something.

 

Saints Row 2 and Watch Dogs 2 had a good number of these interiors, and neither of those games restricted interiors after big missions either. I mean, the original Watch Dogs allowed you to enter bars, and the only use for those was the drinking game. It added a bit of life to the city.

[Aarlirijuk]

I am certainly not expecting anything even close to every building having an interior, but I really hope that there is still a huge leap in both the amount of unique interiors and the amount of detail inside those interiors in GTA VI. If a large building/landmark looks really interesting and unique from the outside and is supposed to be a public space which fulfills a "grand" purpose, I would like there to be a high chance of it having an enterable interior. It would be quite a disappointment if there isn't a large indoor shopping mall or a massive airport to explore inside in freeroam, especially since both interiors existed in GTA VC.

 

One of the issues I have with what appears to be Rockstar's overarching design approach to the interiors in the past GTA entries is that many of them seem to only serve the purpose of being the setting for a mission, and are thus often locked off in freeroam, especially in GTA V. Even the interiors that are still accessible in freeroam, such as the Libertonian museum in GTA IV, are often empty without any NPCs in freeroam.

 

In sociology and urbanism, there is the concept of the "third place," and I think a modified version of this concept may serve as a good theory to explain why adding more and better interiors would be so important to increase immersion for the player in GTA VI's world.

 

A "first place" is someone's home. It is often a more private and intimate space, where a person is either alone or mainly interacts with other people that they have a close relationship with.

 

Modifying this concept for GTA's open worlds, I would not only include a player character's safehouses in this category, but also other interiors they frequent that are inhabited by characters that they have significant relationships with (e.g. friends, associates, and bosses). These types of interiors are unsurprising often smaller and less public.

 

A "second place" is someone's workplace.

 

In GTA's worlds, this would include the multitude of various interiors where missions take place in. Many of these interiors have not been normally accessible in freeroam.

 

A "third place" serves as a space that belongs to neither of the above two categories, and many public spaces are included in this category. Examples include cafes, churches, bars, clubs, libraries, gyms, malls, restaurants, parks, and theaters. According to sociologist Ray Oldenburg and his co-author Karen Christensen, "third places" are "anchors" of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction.

 

GTA's worlds indeed have already had interiors that could be considered "third places," such as bars, nightclubs, strip clubs, convenience stores, bowling alleys, restaurants, gun stores, and clothing stores. However, many of these interiors are rather small with relatively few NPCs in them. Some of these interiors primarily serve very specific and relatively simple purposes, such as increasing/recovering player health, gaining weapons/ammunition, and changing player appearance. Some others serve as spaces for few or less specific activities. A good amount of these interiors don't really appear to encourage many creative interactions with players, and some are repetitive. "Third places" in GTA should instead often serve as spaces for players to creatively interact with the multitude of objects and NPCs inside them, not just being there to serve a few simple purposes.

 

I hope that much grander, complex, detailed, and unique interiors full of NPCs (such as the aforementioned indoor shopping mall and airport terminal) which would be able to "wow" players upon being entered exist in GTA VI. These interiors would not necessarily serve the purpose of being settings for missions, and their main purpose would be to serve as spaces for players to explore and interact with while in freeroam, offering a great amount of diverse gameplay opportunities beyond simple gameplay purposes. Whether simply wandering around and watching NPCs go around their business, or causing absolute mayhem, players should be able to be immersed in these spaces, many of which should be public spaces filled with NPCs from "all walks of life." Within these interiors there could be mix of wide-open spaces (e.g. spacious lobbies of grand hotels/skyscrapers/banks, airy atriums of museums, and cavernous auditoriums/halls/theaters) and tighter corridors, rooms, and stairwells to facilitate creative gameplay. Going on a slight tangent, the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is the largest single-story building in the world; it would be quite the missed opportunity if it appears in GTA VI and does not have its gargantuan interior present. There do not need to be that many of these ambitious interiors, but even several should heavily increase player immersion in the game world and serve as major destinations and landmarks. I would really like to finally see these types of interiors when proper gameplay is revealed.

 

Another issue I have with many interiors in previous GTA entries is the lack of interactivity with many of the objects and props inside them. Many of the objects (e.g. pieces of furniture) inside interiors, especially in GTA V, can't be moved or destroyed. I am not expecting to be able to destroy walls, floors, and ceilings in most buildings, but significantly enhanced destructibility of interiors in GTA VI is certainly something else I would like to see. I hope much more of the glass in buildings can be shattered.

 

One more neat mechanic would be for various interiors to change drastically over the period of the storyline. I hope to see an expanded implementation of these types of mechanics that already exist in RDR2 in GTA VI. For example, a mall that could have originally been full of NPCs in freeroam at the beginning of the storyline would be closed off and permanently abandoned after a shootout occurs in it during the story. Near the end of the story, the abandoned mall could be in a fairly heavily vandalized and decayed state.

Edited May 15 by Aarlirijuk

[Not Strauss Zelnick]

I think/believe that 5%-10% will probably be enterable and have an in-map interior (no loading required). And this is already A LOT

 

[lil vader 2]

I very much agree with your overall statments about interiors. I am really hoping that GTA VI will feature a lot of really interesting and unique interiors to explore, and ideally they'd be well detailed. After 12 years of playing GTA V and Online I feel like I know most of the interiors like the back of my hand. They get reused in FiveM and Online so often that it's actually quite exhausting. If GTA Online 2/GTA VI Online is going to go down this same designed in a similar way to current GTA:O, I just hope that the variety of interiors we mess around in will be 10x the amount. Especially if GTA VI is going to be the game we play for the next decade or so.

 

The caveat? Just having interiors doesn't automatically make the game better. I really hope they're fully fleshed out and have an actual purpose. In the best case scenario, we would have lots of cool Yakuza style mini-games. GTA V was so barebones in this regard (mini-games), I mean even GTA IV let you go bowling and play air hockey. What can I do in GTA V? Play.. golf... or darts? Wow. I was pretty disappointed needless to say. They are fun, don't get me wrong, and it's good they were in there. But my reaction was like "is that it?". There was a lot of potential for way more side activities.

 

We've already got a pretty good look at the nightclub called 'Sinful' (IIRC!) and it looks so amazing and detailed. To me, that's a really great sign early on

 

On 5/8/2025 at 3:19 AM, MosquitoSmasher said:

We now have two trailers and lots of shots, we mostly see general stores which V had as well, V had gas station stores too of which some we could enter. We also know we can access burger joints, but if we can enter all of them remains to be seen. But that goes for many other interiors as well. Of course I don't have unrealistic expectations that we can enter any house and building, but it's unfortunate we've yet to see something resembling a shopping mall ala Vice City, ala Dead Rising. 

You say it's unfortunate we haven't seen anything like that, I think that's for the best tbh. I want as little spoilers of the map as possible. Most of the fun of a brand new GTA comes from thoroughly exploring every virtual square inch and being surprised at the cool sh*t you find .

The only thing I disagree with is the premise any house and building can be enterable. I am not disagreeing with you, I know you said it's unrealistic, I just disagree with the general principle of all interiors being open. I think it would be too demanding for the interior designers. I'd rather them make a relatively appropriate amount of really well thought out, detailed, INTERESTING interiors rather than an abundant amount, which are mostly generic, boring, and totally redundant.

Edited May 14 by lil vader 2